The energy efficiency of lighting has become an important consideration in industrial, consumer, and architectural lighting applications. With the advances in solid state light technology, light emitting diodes (LEDs) have become more energy efficient than fluorescent lights. Further, the marketplace has a large established fixture base for Edison, fluorescent and high intensity discharge lights. These types of applications present a significant technical challenge for LEDs due to their inherent point source nature, and the need to operate the LEDs at relatively low temperatures. Today there are many solutions addressing these issues, including fans, thermal sinks, heat pipes and the like. However, these approaches limit the applications by adding complexity, cost, efficiency loss, added failure modes, an undesirable form factor, and light distribution. The need remains to find a solution that can provide optical and electrical efficiency benefits, at attractive manufacturing costs and design.